Italy's Parliament Confronts Premier in Confidence Vote

By ALAN COWELL,

Published: December 25, 1993

ROME, Dec. 24—
Just when it seemed that Italy was about to emerge from its political doldrums and dissolve Parliament to make way for new elections, the legislature blocked the process today with a demand for a confidence vote on the Government.

The maneuver seemed to be a rear-guard action by lawmakers who stand to lose their jobs -- and, more important, their immunity from prosecution -- when Italians go to the polls next spring to pass judgment on the politicians who benefited from the country's huge corruption scandal.

The lower house speaker, Giorgio Napolitano, set the confidence vote for Jan. 12, the first opportunity after the Parliament's year-end recess.

The revolt against the Government of Prime Minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi reflects the confusion and turmoil in Italy's politics after almost two years of corruption investigations that have implicated more than 3,000 politicians and businessmen. Took Power in May

Though Mr. Ciampi's caretaker Government has set itself the task of pursuing economic and electoral reform since it took over in May, its parliamentary majority is dominated by the same old-guard Christian Democrats and Socialists who would lose the most from change.

The Government had been expected to seek a dissolution of Parliament once it won legislative approval this week of a cost-cutting 1994 budget and approved the final details of election reform. Dissolving the assembly would have cleared the way for President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro to set a date for new elections, expected in late March, and ask Mr. Ciampi's Government to remain in office until then.

But late Thursday night, Marco Pannella, a civil rights campaigner known as a parliamentary maverick, demanded a confidence vote. The idea quickly won support from legislators who saw it as a way of delaying new elections.

Mr. Pannella said Mr. Ciampi's Government had done what it set out to do when it was appointed and should hand over power to another interim administration to oversee the voting. President Plans Meetings

President Scalfaro scheduled meetings with leading politicians between now and Jan. 12. "He wants a better understanding of the motives of those who brought the motion and to learn the position of the parliamentary groups," said Mr. Napolitano, the lower house speaker, in scheduling the vote.

The development leaves Mr. Ciampi to face the anomaly that his principal parliamentary support now comes from former Communists regrouped in the Democratic Party of the Left, which is technically the opposition, while the four-party coalition that supposedly underpins his administration is actively seeking his downfall.

"The Ciampi Government is the only authority to preside over elections, which must be held in March or April," said Franco Bassanini, a politician of the Democratic Party of the Left.

The confidence vote presents hazards both for Mr. Ciampi and the pace of political reform. If he loses he would be required by law to step down, and President Scalfaro would name a new Prime Minister who would then hold consultations about forming a new coalition government.

Italy's postwar political establishment has substantial reason to fear a new national election. In mayoral votes last month in major cities from Palermo to Venice, the Christian Democrats and Socialists attracted negligible support, while the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement and the Democratic Party of the Left scored big gains.

In the calculations of the disgraced parties, once the center-weight of political power, time is essential if they are to revive their fortunes and compete against the alliance of leftist parties that emerged strongest from the mayoral vote. Such anxieties are reflected in a separate demand in the legislature that national elections be delayed until June so that they will coincide with European Parliament elections.